Stanton IA

Last night at a party I had a conversation with a gentleman, born in 1926, about his home town--Stanton IA. I had, to my chagrin, no previous knowledge of the town. Our talk was anything but clear; he was hard-of-hearing, the room was loud, and we were frequently interrupted by other partygoers. All I could do was to get a few snatches of his past-- (1) born on Christmas Day 1926 in 40 below weather, with no doctor able to get to his country home (did he survive? I asked); (2) some kind of lightning strike on one of the Swedish Lutheran Churches on Easter Saturday evening in 1938; (3) something about Folger's coffee/Mrs. Olson; (4) a big water tower that held hundreds of thousands of cups of coffee; (5) another big water tower holding even more cups of coffee.

My first reaction in learning this disparate set of apparently unrelated facts about Stanton IA was to thank him, move on and then forget all about it. But something inside kept nudging me--telling me that I ought to try to put together a story of Stanton from the few facts that Vern told me. This essay shows how I moved from confusion to meaning, through a little study. It also will serve, I hope, to encourage others to make sense of desultory and seemingly mindless conversations, especially when they seem to be based on some recognizable facts. Once you do this long enough, you begin to have a "nose" for meaning and a longing to understand the forces and experiences shaping people's lives.

Discovering Stanton, Iowa

I have never been to Stanton (population 750), equidistant from Omaha NE and the Missouri border, and I could barely suppress a smile when I learned that it was awarded the "top tourism community under 5,000 population" by some Iowa tourist board in 1997.... As if people just line up to learn which town in Iowa under 5,000 in population they just have to visit. Here is a little bit about the town. Its claim to fame is its Swedish heritage, experienced through the Swedish Heritage and Cultural Center in town. As I read about the town, it reminded me of Lindsborg, KS, about 60 miles from where I lived for six years, which has been trying to cash in on its Swedish heritage for decades.

Stanton's "Swedishness" goes back to the vision of Pastor Bengt Magnus Halland (1837-1902), who led the settlement of the country early in the 1870s by advertising, as a railroad agent, for "God-fearing" and "non-drinking" Swedes. Over the next 30 years, he was instrumental in setting up about six Lutheran Churches and a Lutheran Children's Home in the area.

None of this is particularly riveting or unexpected, but it puts some things in context. My new friend Vern, of Swedish descent, was born on a farm a few miles outside of town late in 1926. One of his most vivid childhood memories was a lightning strike at the downtown church, Mamrelund Lutheran, on Easter Saturday evening in 1938. It was known as the "Big White Church," which stood like a hen with her chicks surrounding her--the "little white houses." To this day, almost all homes in Stanton are painted white. While this book tells about that lightning strike, and mentions that only the bell and four church record books survived, Vern told me a few things beyond this. He said that when the lightning ripped through the 150'+ tall steeple, he could hear the hand-hammered nails ripping from the wood all the way down the steeple. In addition, he mentioned that the lightning bolt then split, taking the church with it and then crossing the street to consume a large section of the pastor's home. Hm...Easter Eve, destroying both Church and parsonage...what was God trying to say?

Getting the Coffee Story Straight

Well, Vern left for "The War" in 1944, and then moved to CA after the war's conclusion. He would return to visit Stanton every year until about 2005, but he took up residence in the Bay Area beginning in 1946. Yet in the ensuing 60+ years Stanton was placed "on the map," and that for an interesting reason. An actress born in Stanton, Virginia Christine (real name Virginia Rickett Kraft Feld, residence 307 Hilltop), known to TV viewers as "Mrs. Olson," starred in a popular mid-1960s 30-second television commercial for Folger's Coffee. Here is the video footage of the commercial, depicting the wise Mrs. Olson issuing comforting (what is the feminine equivalent of "avuncular"? Can we invent the word "aviacular?") advice with a Swedish accent to a younger woman about making good coffee--by using "Mountain-grown" Folgers. What the heck does that mean? Is it like the "freshness" of Newport cigarettes, also popular about the time?

The commercial ran in the late 1960s. Trying to capitalize on their "coffee" as well as "Swedish" fame, Stanton made an interesting gambit in the 1970s. The town decided to build a watertower, 125' high, shaped and painted like a Swedish coffee pot. It can hold 40,000 gallons (640,000 cups) of coffee. Here is a picture of that watertower. Then, as if this was not enough, in 2000, the year that everyone in America was dreaming dreams of bigness, the town went "all-out," and built the new Swedish Coffee Cup watertower, in the form of a cup. Here it is. Though only 96' tall, it can hold 150,000 gallons--or 2,400,000 cups of coffee. It was built at the end of the road where "Mrs. Olson" actually lived. Ah, the price of celebrity. Indeed, the cross street to the north of the block where Virginia Christine lived is "Christine St."

Conclusion

I can imagine, in anticipation, the excitement that will well up within me sometime when I visit Stanton. As soon as I turn off Rt. 34, and head down towards Hilltop, or even to the Swedish Cultural Center, my heart will flutter. I will want to learn various Swedish phrases in preparation--maybe how to hold an entire dialogue in the language.

See what you learn when you just listen to people and then try to make sense of what they say?

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